MONEY: Easier Does It

More than anything else, investors, home
buyers and borrowers of all sorts have been awaiting one particular
event:
a sign of some easing of the high interest rates that have been
squeezing credit and the securities markets dry for months. Some early
indications of ease appeared in September, when the Federal Reserve
Board increased the amount of money available for lending and Chairman
Arthur Burns announced that he would tolerate "no credit crunch in
our country." Now at long last the Fed's moves are beginning to
show up in hard (or rather, softer) figures.